Real Digital is installing an Ibis Smart-Binder at its Croydon premises alongside a new Böwe System Fusion Cross inserter.
The Fusion Cross high speed inserter will cut set up times especially with multiple page documents and selective enclosing. The Smart finisher will deliver variable pagination stitched and spine glued product from the roll printed on its Screen TruepressJet 520 inkjet machines.
Both increase the ability to deliver the kinds of documents that customers require in an automated way. The inserter has been put though its paces by operations director Barry Stephens, who describes it as ‘the last enclosing line you will ever need. This technology is outstanding”.
Supplied by Friedheim International, the Ibis has undergone equally rigorous testing. It will help improve service to an insurance customer client through supplying consumers with personalised policy documents that can involve variable number of pages.
“Previously a consumer buying motoring insurance might be sent a schedule with 240pp to cover all possibilities. Now they can receive a 20pp product excluding the products they have not bought, so no European cover, no additional breakdown cover for a motoring policy perhaps,” says Robert Burbidge, director of customer communications strategy.
Previously Real Digitalwould have to sheet, fold and load a conventional stitching line to finish this work. The Smart Finisher can eliminate much of this work. An extra cover feeder will take sheets printed on the company’s iGens and match these to the body pages.
“We are very much moving towards using variable communications to improve the customer experience, providing them with information in the way they want and need. By delivering solutions like this, the investment will pay for itself; the end consumer is happy and the customer is happy because we are sending out a document which costs less to post. Our customers are under pressure to be clear in their communications with their customers.”
The inserting line delivers similar flexible performance while running at high speed with integrity checking and reporting integral to the system. Stephens says: “Despite all the real life issues I threw at the enclosing line, Böwe had clearly catered for them and were actually able to demonstrate solutions for problems I had not previously considered.”
John Cracknell, managing director of Ibis, says the machine on show at the Hunkeler Innovation Days is likely to be headed to Croydon after the show. This had a table to link directly to a printed reel or when raised to feed sheets, each being checked before entering the fold and accumulating section. The unit offers both stitching and a glued spine, a technology that Ibis has patented and which is proving higher popular he explains. “We found at Drupa 2016 that everybody wants to see the gluing option, which is why at Hunkeler we were only running with the gluing option,” says Cracknell.
The company has added a Smart Data Analytics feature to display job related information in a visual interface either by the side of the machine or to a production or customer service desk.
The UK company has sold more than 150 units around the world, the majority in the US where, as with Real Digital, they are used to produce variable pagination insurance documents and product manuals.
Robert Burbidge seals the deal with John Cracknell to take an Ibis Smart Binder into the Real Digital factory in Croydon during Hunkeler Innovation Days. The digital print company is also buying a Böwe Fusion Cross inserter.
